Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance by Claire Adams Page A

mature one, the one who has his life together, but you’re just a
child.”
    “Kids have it made,”
Chris says. “Follow a few simple rules and someone will take care of everything
else for you. That’s the life.”
    “It’s time to grow up,” I
tell him. “Can you even hear yourself?”
    “You know something,
bro?” he asks. “Studies show that most people who go around telling everyone
else to grow up are just unhappy that they don’t have a better relationship
with their inner child.”
    Chris and his studies...
It’s a joke, but I’m not laughing.
    “I’m not going to do it
anymore,” I tell him. “Find some other patsy.”
    “Anyone ever tell you
that you talk like a geezer?” Chris asks, but I don’t dignify the question with
a response.
    “So, what are you willing
to do?” I ask him. “If you’re going to stay here, I’ll help you, but only if
you stop all the scamming and get a real job.”
    “Oh, like the ‘real job’
you’ve got?” he asks. “Just invite me to one of your fights and I’ll see if I
can’t get my new career off the ground. I can’t wait to work with my little
bro!” he mocks.
    “If I thought for a
second that you had anything like the discipline and determination to fight,
I’d train you myself,” I tell him. “That’s not going to happen, though.”
    “Hold on a minute,” he
says. “We’re just going to gloss right over that? What you do isn’t any more
legal than what I do. Where you get off acting like you’re better than—”
    “The difference is that I
don’t trick anyone into fighting,” I tell him. “I don’t lie or make up stories
to get through the door, and if someone wants to back out, that’s on them. The
money I make, I make because people bet on me. They know that I get things
done. It’s not even the same thing.”
    “Potato, tomato,” he
says. “It doesn’t matter, only…”
    Why did I have a feeling
there was another shoe just waiting to drop?
    “What?” I ask curtly.
    “Well,” he says. “I’m
sure you noticed I don’t have my car [3] with me this time.”
    “Yeah,” I answer. “I
assumed you’d stolen it, though, so I wasn’t expecting to see it again anyway.”
    “I didn’t steal it!” he
protests. “It was on loan [4] .”
    “Uh huh,” I yawn. “Who
loaned it to you?”
    “Well, it was more of an
‘I borrowed it’ thing than a formal loan,” he says.
    “Okay, so you stole it
then,” I state.
    “No—gosh, will you listen
to me?” Chris says. “I was working with this guy who works at a dealership. We
were doing a new take on the Spanish Prisoner, but when I got that bag of
jewelry—”
    “Hold on,” I tell him,
rubbing my forehead. “So you’re telling me you got this guy to let you use one
of the dealership’s car’s, you and him start scamming people together, at which
point, you decide to then scam your partner?” I ask.
    “In the business world,
they call that initiative,” Chris says.
    “In the real world, they
call that twenty years in a cell with a large roommate,” I respond.
    “I’m just trying to get
back what’s mine,” Chris says ambiguously. “I know you think you had things
hard growing up, but things were worse for me.”
    “They were not!” I shout.
“Even if they were—which, again, they’re not —that
doesn’t entitle you to just start ripping off everyone you meet.”
    “Oh right,” he says. “You
know you were mom’s favorite.”
    “Mom’s favorite was a
half-gallon bottle of cheap vodka, with a splash of Everclear in every shot,” I
snap back. “What does that have to do with anything anyway?”
    “I’m just saying that you
and I grew up in different worlds and mine’s not easy to get out of [5] , you know?” he asks.
    “If you’re trying to get
out, I’ll help you get out,” I tell him, “but I’m not going to let you con me
into thinking you’re going to change when we both know you’ll just look for the
first chance to take a